The scorching sun was heating up to the 100 degrees in the Fahrenheit scale in Chennai last summer and all of us were terribly waiting for our exams to get over by the end of this March. The word given by our loving dad was buzzing on my ears when I was even attempting the exams. Usually, it would be the beat of the latest Dappankoothu tunes you had heard lately. I do not feel any guilt in revealing this to the world, as I strongly believe such an awkward phenomenon happens with the entire student community. Don’t they? Ah, away, all three of the kids were excited about this tour to the beautiful neighbouring state of Kerala after the commencement of our annual exams.
As we’re getting cooked by the intense hot temperature of our hometown, we were craving to experience anything cold and chilly. A pack of ice cream or Falooda will not cool us down by travelling to any cold travel destination would. Ooty and Kodaikanal are the clichéd options here in Tamil Nadu, so are the Munnar and Wayanad in Kerala. I needed to choose something different. And finally, that particular thought brought us here in the quaint village of Suryanelli in the south-eastern part of the evergreen Idukki.
So on the scheduled day, we arrived in the nearest (which is 133 km away) Cochin International Airport and after 5 hours we reached at a beautiful resort on a hilltop at Suryanelli. It was my mom’s decision to demands for a location like that, so dad had asked our tour operator Gogeo Holidays to include such a provision in our tour packages. So she was in happiness knew no bounds when we arrived. Once settling in there, we clicked many pictures from there. Apart from natural beauty, the resort had well-landscaped gardens. It was really charming and cold. Yes, even when it was evening breeze, our youngest brother was already shivering. Both me and my younger sister teasing him for unnecessarily boasting off that he is pretty much healthy. I very much enjoy this particular thing of my family, as we never impede in finding light moments in anything that we do.We relaxed for the rest of the day and had to prepare our trekking to the Kolukkumalai on the very next morning. We dozed off to sleep quite quickly as we were tired after the long flights.
So on the very next early morning, our tour representative-cum-driver accompanied us to the majestic hills of Kolukkumalai, which is only a 7 km distance from our place but it took around 1 hour to reach our destination. Sounds silly right? However, you don’t have to be. Instead, you could appreciate the cool driving skills of his across those numerous hairpin curves and truly sloppy roads. I think it had rained the previous day. Everything beforehand looked misty and almost just opaque thick clouds beyond after some distances. Yes, we were feeling chilly then. At last, when we reached the place, the temperatures that existed there were really low. I had expected some cold climate amid this expansive tea plantations, but never this frosty. Mom gave sweaters to all of us expect our youngest brother (because he was already wearing one) and wore them immediately once got out of the cab.
After crossing the entry points, we were first moving in the forestry paths and within no time, we were in the midst of beautiful tea plantations. From there, we trekked on and on to reach the highest point. As we were moving upwards, ears were getting blocked, but that never hindered us from finishing our quest. We got to witness a beautiful sight from there. The very first rays of the sun were falling on one of the sides of the verdant hills even though it was cloudy on the other sides. It was truly magical and we had never seen such a sight before in our lives. When the clouds got cleared, for a moment we felt that we were at the top of the world, as we could see quite many distances and places from that summit. There were few water bodies that seemed as some tangled snakes. Anyways the whole picture even resembled the satellite version of the Google map!
This was completely a novel fact for all us. We were truly standing on the highest ever tea plantation of the entire world! We took many photos from that point, as the lush green cover of tea estates were creating a splendid background to our pictures. Gradually, we climbed down the hills a bit faster, as we were to rush to the very next location after having lunch. From the signboards hanged there, we could analyse that they were scripted in plain Tamil!! I inquired about this with our guide uncle (yes, by this meantime, all of us kids had created a rapport with him and started addressing him as ‘uncle’) and he said that we were indeed standing just beside the border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, so it was written like that. Once reaching the foothills, we travelled for some time and had a sumptuous delicious lunch from a roadside Kerala restaurant at surprisingly very cheap prices. They served the traditional dishes comprising of Tapioca with fish and beef curry, boiled rice with Pullissery and Kerala style sambhar and all of them were really tasty.
After that, we proceeded to the next destination of our tour, which was the Anayirankal Dam. Guide uncle said that it was the same water reservoir that was looking like an entangled snake, which we saw from the peak of that massive hilltop. The travel to the dam took some more minutes than an hour, but they looked closer from there. It was rather surprising to find the same places included in the packages from the same point. On reaching that place, we had to climb those countless small steps of the tall dam to mount at the upper part of them. Thank god that we had arrived at this picturesque dam when it was approaching to the evening, as the sunlight was directing straight to us. Otherwise, it would have been difficult to climb upstairs with our little brother as the youngest of the family was a bit exhausted. The view from the top was really mesmerising when the lake was surrounded by the hills from all sides. We had so much fun on this trip, thank you Gogeo Holidays for making this absolutely exciting.
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